The Last House on the Left

An obvious improvement over its amateurish predecessor, The Last House on the Left employs the basic structure of Wes Craven’s 1972 debut as a springboard for an uneven yet consistently engaging horror effort. The storyline follows athletic teenager Mari Collingwood (Sara Paxton) as she and a friend (Martha MacIsaac’s Paige) are kidnapped, assaulted, and left for dead by a quartet of vicious goons (led by Garret Dillahunt’s Krug), with the latter half of the proceedings detailing Mari’s parents’ (Tony Goldwyn’s John and Monica Potter’s Emma) efforts at avenging the mistreatment of their only child. It’s a set-up that’ll seem instantly familiar to those viewers with even a passing familiarity with Craven’s creation, yet there’s little doubt that screenwriters Adam Alleca and Carl Ellsworth generally do a superb job of infusing the proceedings with bursts of unexpected innovation (eg Krug’s backstory, Mari’s fate, etc). It’s also worth noting that the misguided comedic elements that plagued the first film are entirely absent here, as director Dennis Iliadis emphasizes an atmosphere of dread that pervades throughout much of The Last House on the Left‘s (admittedly overlong) running time. And while Iliadis and company eschew the torture and sadism featured so prominently in the original (eg the notorious “pee your pants” interlude has been excised), the movie is often quite unflinching in its portrayal of violence and it’s certainly not difficult to envision some viewers having a tough time with the intentionally hard-to-watch rape sequence. The uniformly strong performances cement the picture’s place as an above-average horror remake, and though there are admittedly a few lulls within the narrative (ie the film probably should’ve topped out at 80 minutes), it ultimately goes without saying that The Last House on the Left is superior in every conceivable way to its head-scratchingly lauded predecessor.

*** out of ****